Social Idiocy
I've been thinking about social media a lot, and Facebook in particular. I find it produces a lot of anxiety and irritation for me, and I complain a lot about it but also feel fairly addicted. A few thoughts, half formed, are nagging at me with regards to this.
Yesterday I made a conscious effort to stay off FB most of the day after getting in an early morning argument with someone over something totally trivial. Someone corrected a friend over a meme he said attributed the wrong political party to my favorite Presidential candidate, I pointed to source saying it was correct, and he argued back in a very stupid way. This shit boils my blood...in fact most conflict does these days. I told him he was fighting for the sake of fighting and logged out, even though I was at the computer most of the day anyway. I recognize it's a bit hypocritical because I have a tendency to argue for no reason too, just to be right. But it was a good exercise for me. Usually I'll pretty much be tied into FB all day. I'll try to do other things but if there's an update I'll just pop over to check it and then be sucked back in.
In my day of no Facebook, I checked news on Reddit and Google News. The big news yesterday was Kim Davis' release, and that bullshit circus with Huckabee treating her like a hero and all that. I found myself impulsively wanting to log into Facebook to bitch about it, but realized I was staying logged out, and didn't really have anywhere else to vent in the same way (I have Twitter and G+ accounts but they get very little interaction). So, after half a second of sort of huffing about not having that outlet, I...closed the link and went about my day. And that little act helped me recognize that a lot of these scandals and outrages on social media are really not that big. We just make them big because we want to be outraged. I was much less anxious yesterday having closed that door to vent.
Then today, while waiting in line at Target to buy junk food I didn't need, I casually eyed the Hollywood tabloids. There was a cover story about some stars I knew of, and some scandal about one of them seducing a nanny, and a pregnancy, and a jilted lover. I scoffed because obviously I did, and it's so easy to mock the "biddies" who get all wound up in those scandals, but later it occurred to me that I'm no better, and maybe a lot of other people too.
Donald Trump doesn't affect my life. He won't win, and basically no one I associate will be voting for him. But his antics outrage us. The sheer stupidity of his words, and maybe some of his followers' actions, switch me into that blood boiling mode. But there is nothing gained by reading these stories. That fat shaming unfunny "comedian" from Canada made my blood boil, but..who cares? Some moron said something stupid! All this shit that we have a million arguments to convince us we're doing, feeling, seeing something important? It's all just titillation of our passions in the same way Ben Affleck's pregnancy scandal is. Sure there are some important social issues tangentially connected to them, but our attention to these outrage stories doesn't make the issue any better, and in point of fact makes me worse. I'm more distracted, more irritable, and I spend less time actually DOING anything at all.
So I've written about my frustrations with Facebook a lot and not done anything about them for too long. I "had" to be there because I had events to promote, or fan pages to moderate, real life interactions that went on there, and business to do. But I'm on hiatus from performing, and of my 1339 "friends" I've only met maybe half of them, and a lot are professional performance contacts that don't need to see my personal musings. I've actually lost those types of contacts more than any for that reason. So I think it might be time to put this account to sleep until I need it again. I'm not going to do another mass deletion like the old days of FB. I don't want to lose track of all these great folks here. But I don't really see myself entirely giving up FB and all the benefits that come with it either. I'm still a little at sea about this...I wish I just had the willpower to only log in when I needed to, but I keep proving I don't.
Yesterday I made a conscious effort to stay off FB most of the day after getting in an early morning argument with someone over something totally trivial. Someone corrected a friend over a meme he said attributed the wrong political party to my favorite Presidential candidate, I pointed to source saying it was correct, and he argued back in a very stupid way. This shit boils my blood...in fact most conflict does these days. I told him he was fighting for the sake of fighting and logged out, even though I was at the computer most of the day anyway. I recognize it's a bit hypocritical because I have a tendency to argue for no reason too, just to be right. But it was a good exercise for me. Usually I'll pretty much be tied into FB all day. I'll try to do other things but if there's an update I'll just pop over to check it and then be sucked back in.
In my day of no Facebook, I checked news on Reddit and Google News. The big news yesterday was Kim Davis' release, and that bullshit circus with Huckabee treating her like a hero and all that. I found myself impulsively wanting to log into Facebook to bitch about it, but realized I was staying logged out, and didn't really have anywhere else to vent in the same way (I have Twitter and G+ accounts but they get very little interaction). So, after half a second of sort of huffing about not having that outlet, I...closed the link and went about my day. And that little act helped me recognize that a lot of these scandals and outrages on social media are really not that big. We just make them big because we want to be outraged. I was much less anxious yesterday having closed that door to vent.
Then today, while waiting in line at Target to buy junk food I didn't need, I casually eyed the Hollywood tabloids. There was a cover story about some stars I knew of, and some scandal about one of them seducing a nanny, and a pregnancy, and a jilted lover. I scoffed because obviously I did, and it's so easy to mock the "biddies" who get all wound up in those scandals, but later it occurred to me that I'm no better, and maybe a lot of other people too.
Donald Trump doesn't affect my life. He won't win, and basically no one I associate will be voting for him. But his antics outrage us. The sheer stupidity of his words, and maybe some of his followers' actions, switch me into that blood boiling mode. But there is nothing gained by reading these stories. That fat shaming unfunny "comedian" from Canada made my blood boil, but..who cares? Some moron said something stupid! All this shit that we have a million arguments to convince us we're doing, feeling, seeing something important? It's all just titillation of our passions in the same way Ben Affleck's pregnancy scandal is. Sure there are some important social issues tangentially connected to them, but our attention to these outrage stories doesn't make the issue any better, and in point of fact makes me worse. I'm more distracted, more irritable, and I spend less time actually DOING anything at all.
So I've written about my frustrations with Facebook a lot and not done anything about them for too long. I "had" to be there because I had events to promote, or fan pages to moderate, real life interactions that went on there, and business to do. But I'm on hiatus from performing, and of my 1339 "friends" I've only met maybe half of them, and a lot are professional performance contacts that don't need to see my personal musings. I've actually lost those types of contacts more than any for that reason. So I think it might be time to put this account to sleep until I need it again. I'm not going to do another mass deletion like the old days of FB. I don't want to lose track of all these great folks here. But I don't really see myself entirely giving up FB and all the benefits that come with it either. I'm still a little at sea about this...I wish I just had the willpower to only log in when I needed to, but I keep proving I don't.